Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a conductive coating liquid composition, and an antistatic film and a display device using the same.
Discussion of Related Art
With the current rapid development of the information-oriented society, there is a growing need of flat panel displays having excellent characteristics, such as slim profile, light weight, and low power consumption. Of these, liquid crystal displays have been widely applied to laptops or desktop monitors due to their excellent resolution, color display, and picture quality.
In general, a liquid crystal display is a device in which two substrates each having electrodes on one surface thereof are disposed such that the electrode-formed surfaces face each other, a liquid crystal material is interposed between the two substrates, and then a voltage is applied to the electrodes formed on the respective substrates to generate an electric field, which moves liquid crystal molecules to vary the transmittance of light, thereby displaying images. Here, much static electricity may be generated during the unit processes of manufacturing each substrate of the liquid crystal display.
In order to discharge such static electricity and effectively release charges accumulated at the time of producing finished products, indium-tin-oxide (ITO) or indium zinc oxide (IZO), which is a transparent conductive material, is utilized for an antistatic film on an external surface of the upper substrate. However, indium tin oxide (ITO) and indium zinc oxide (IZO) are very expensive transparent conductive metal materials, which thus increase the manufacturing costs. Especially, the price of indium, a rare metal, which is the main raw material of indium tin oxide (TIO) and indium zinc oxide (IZO), has increased rapidly in recent years, and its supply is currently restricted due to the export control policy of the resource holding countries.
The recent introduction of portable products with embedded touch sensors, such as mobile phones, PDAs, laptops, etc., which can be operated by touching the screen, are attracting a lot of attention from users. In line with this trend, many attempts have been made in recent years to add touch functionality to liquid crystal displays that are used as display devices in a variety of applications. Of these, the demand for in-cell liquid crystal displays with embedded touch functionality is on the rise. In-cell liquid crystal displays have advantages, such as slim profile, improved cost structure owing to the reduction in the cost of raw materials, and lightweight, since touch electrodes are formed inside the display panel, without a separate touch panel attached on the liquid crystal display.
However, in spite of the touch sensors provided inside the display panel with in-cell technology, static electricity is discharged by the aforementioned antistatic film, and thus the touch sensors are not able to detect a change in capacitance when touched by a finger or the like, thereby resulting in deterioration in the touch sensitivity of the touch sensors. In other words, the antistatic film serves as a conductor with relatively high electrical conductivity when compared with an amount of capacitance generated by a finger touch or the like, thereby discharging the capacitance so that the touch sensors are not able to recognize touch from a user's finger or the like.
Eliminating the antistatic film to address this problem will lead to a higher failure rate due to static electricity generated during manufacturing, which, in turn, increases the cost of failure and again increases the manufacturing costs, thus degrading low display quality.